Pink in Strawberry Yogurt Comes from Crushed Bugs

Few people know that the food coloring listed as cochineal extract comes from female beetles. Food activists want to spread the word.

When you dig into a strawberry Yoplait yogurt, take a moment to contemplate where the beautiful pink color comes from. Strawberries? Think again. It comes from crushed bugs. Specifically, from the female cochineal beetles and their eggs. And it's not just yogurt. The bugs are also used to give red coloring to Hershey Good & Plenty candies, Tropicana grapefruit juice, and other common foods.

You won't find "crushed bugs" on the list of ingredients for any of these foods, however. Companies have a bit of latitude in describing exactly what they put in our food. Many larger companies, such as General Mills, the manufacturer of Yoplait and Pepsi, the maker of Tropicana, identify the dye in their products as either carmine, or cochineal extract. Still, many companies simply list "artificial color" on their ingredients list without giving any details.

Food activists are trying to change disclosure requirements. The Food & Drug Administration has received numerous complaints over the issue and is now in the process of considering a proposal to require color additives like the cochineal extract to be disclosed on the labels of all foods that use them. "Hopefully we'll see something by the end of the year," says Michael Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food advocacy group in Washington, D. C.

Claim: The food colorants cochineal and carmine are made from ground beetles.

Status: True.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2001]

There is a book out very recently that claims the red color of strawberry milkshakes comes from a tropical beetle ground up for its red coloring.

Origins: Next time you're browsing the supermarket in search of the makings of that night's dinner, pause a moment to read the ingredients labels of your favorite red-colored ingestibles and cosmetics. Chances are, you'll discover a notation for cochineal, carmine, or carminic acid, pigments whose origins might surprise and possibly disgust you.

Cochineal and its close cousin carmine (also known as carminic acid) are derived from the crushed carcasses of a particular South and Central American beetle. These popular colorants, which today are used to impart a deep red shade to fruit juices, gelatins, candies, shampoos, and more, come from the female Dactylopius coccus, a beetle that inhabits a type of cactus known as Opuntia.

Dactylopius coccus was the source of a red dye used by Aztecs and Mexican Indians for centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. Those indigenous peoples would collect cochineal insects, briefly immerse them in hot water to kill the beasties and dissolve the females' waxy coating, and then dry them in the sun. The desiccated insects would then be ground to a fine powder.

The Spaniards immediately grasped the potential of the pigment, so these dried insects became one of the first products to be exported from the New World to the Old. Europeans took to the beautiful, bright scarlet colour immediately both for its vibrant hue and for its extraordinary colorfast properties, ensuring that boatloads of cochineal insects would make the trans-Atlantic trek.

Today cochineal has been surpassed as a dye for cloth by a number of synthetic pigments, but is still widely used as a coloring agent for a number of foodstuffs, beverages, and cosmetics (because many of those synthetic dyes proved dangerous to humans when taken internally or allowed to leach into the body through the skin). It takes about 70,000 insects to make one pound of cochineal.

While cochineal is used in a wide variety of foods, it is not found in kosher products because Jewish dietary laws prohibit the inclusion of insects or their parts in food. The "ewww!" factor nothwithstanding, cochineal is a safe food colorant aside from a few rare cases of allergic reaction.

Another red dye used in foods, FD&C Red Dye #40 (alternatively known as Red #40), is often mistakenly assumed to be a euphemism for cochineal or carmine. It's not — it's bug-free and is actually derived from coal.

Our distaste at the thought of ingesting bugs is based on cultural factors rather than the properties or flavors of the insects themselves. Western society eschews (rather than chews) bugs, hence the widespread "Ewww!" reaction to the news that some of our favorite foods contain extract of beetle.

The thing that is wrong with that is #1 people that manufacture it dont even put that there is crushed bugs on the label of the strawberry yogurt. And second of all most people dont like to eat bugs,( well at least i dont if i have something to say about it). I agree with you at a point because you are right its not hurting us but that is just gross to be eating bugs!! The only bugs i have ate is Chocolate covered grasshopper legs and a knat!! Not any beetles that is just sick!!! :)

So what is wrong with that? Beetles are natural, aren't they?

Is the coloring harmful? Nothing to indicate that it is.

So what's the problem?

Gotta laugh, the amount of toxic artificial crap most people eat today and they go squeemish over a few beetles!

The thing that is wrong with that is #1 people that manufacture it dont even put that there is crushed bugs on the label of the strawberry yogurt. And second of all most people dont like to eat bugs,( well at least i dont if i have something to say about it). I agree with you at a point because you are right its not hurting us but that is just gross to be eating bugs!! The only bugs i have ate is Chocolate covered grasshopper legs and a knat!! Not any beetles that is just sick!!! :)

So what is wrong with that? Beetles are natural, aren't they?

Is the coloring harmful? Nothing to indicate that it is.

So what's the problem?

Gotta laugh, the amount of toxic artificial crap most people eat today and they go squeemish over a few beetles!

You do realize that in most societies, bugs are considered a very good food source. In the bible, John the Baptist survived on locust (grasshoppers). I think it is time for everybody in the US to get a grip on reality, and it is not what you have been taught.

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.Victor Frank~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-Let Go and Let God... Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders & says... 'Oh crap....she's awake!!'

I was handling those machines. my boss always warned us to not eat one of them entirely because they have drug like effects. So we did and got a bit out of control, the creatures need to be crushed alive so it was a bit difficult to handle that, many times they ran all over the place and we were very happy with the crushing sound, like leisure-time, only that the stuff often squirted out on many places, it looked like yogurt all over the factory walls and colleagues of mine got reddish glowing eyes from that, which is still much better as when their eggs snatch inside of your brains

A.K.A - Aresh, Awakened Me, An Ominous Coward (Howard), The Goddess Pandora, Aumon Haht Fith Ashai, Within The Flower and a few others...------------------------------------

In all things, i am flowing back thru and in and out, within and without and beyond them.

This is the Cosm. This is both I and You.

I am the Truth, and I am the Lie - I am the very spark of the Divine!

------------------as soon as you even go near these things your ego knows what it is.. its all like "what ya gonna do with that?" "Hope you not gonna take it" "cause i will throw myself down on the floor and scratch, claw and bite and tantrum" - Kyuubi

"the gift of love makes much more sense than frankincense gold and myrhh" - Only Me

More interesting is the fact the strawbeerry aromes in yoghurt are made of rotting bark, paper, cellulose in general.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 625147

that and the fact that yogurt is mainly just bacterias on rotten dairies - funny thing tho, that's actually really good for your digestive tract.

Seriously, people, if this grosses you out that much, you might as well just stop eating practically anything; in the end, most of it is pretty "disgusting", but that is just nature for you.

I WILL NOT let consequences dictate my course of action!

A.K.A - Aresh, Awakened Me, An Ominous Coward (Howard), The Goddess Pandora, Aumon Haht Fith Ashai, Within The Flower and a few others...------------------------------------

In all things, i am flowing back thru and in and out, within and without and beyond them.

This is the Cosm. This is both I and You.

I am the Truth, and I am the Lie - I am the very spark of the Divine!

------------------as soon as you even go near these things your ego knows what it is.. its all like "what ya gonna do with that?" "Hope you not gonna take it" "cause i will throw myself down on the floor and scratch, claw and bite and tantrum" - Kyuubi

"the gift of love makes much more sense than frankincense gold and myrhh" - Only Me

While I agree on that statement, I would like to point out, that there is a difference between natural processes and human processed food. Nature does not need money.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 625147

For sure...

Then again, if you really think deeply about it, even man made is "natural" in a way, for it is our nature in our ways.

But, let's not get into semantics and philosophy here.

I WILL NOT let consequences dictate my course of action!

A.K.A - Aresh, Awakened Me, An Ominous Coward (Howard), The Goddess Pandora, Aumon Haht Fith Ashai, Within The Flower and a few others...------------------------------------

In all things, i am flowing back thru and in and out, within and without and beyond them.

This is the Cosm. This is both I and You.

I am the Truth, and I am the Lie - I am the very spark of the Divine!

------------------as soon as you even go near these things your ego knows what it is.. its all like "what ya gonna do with that?" "Hope you not gonna take it" "cause i will throw myself down on the floor and scratch, claw and bite and tantrum" - Kyuubi

"the gift of love makes much more sense than frankincense gold and myrhh" - Only Me